Debate Bares Democrats' Great Divide

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2003; Page A01

COLUMBIA, S.C., May 4 -- Democrats are united in their determination to send President Bush back to Texas in November 2004, but the first debate of the presidential campaign exposed the limits of that unity and the near-total absence of consensus on how best to challenge the president in the general election.

The president was barely a presence at Saturday's 90-minute debate on the campus of the University of South Carolina, attacked from time to time for his tax cuts and record on the economy but hardly the main focus of the nine candidates on the stage.

Instead, the Democrats turned on one another -- in some cases to bare serious differences over the war in Iraq or how to expand health care coverage; in other cases to reveal personal animosities and to begin in earnest the jockeying for position in what now promises to be an especially tough battle for the nomination.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and former Vermont governor Howard Dean attacked one another. Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) attacked Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). And Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) attacked any number of his rivals. At different points, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and the Rev. Al Sharpton urged their fellow candidates to aim their fire at the president, rather than give the Republicans ammunition to use against the Democratic nominee -- but to no avail.

ABC News's George Stephanopoulos skillfully moderated the debate, and by the time it ended, the surprise of the night was Lieberman's strong performance. The party's 2000 vice presidential nominee carved out space in a crowded field as a hawk on national security, a centrist on domestic issues. Democrats cannot win in 2004, he warned, with a foreign policy message that is "anything other than strength" or by offering "big-spending Democratic ideas of the past" on domestic problems.

No one needed a good showing more than Lieberman, who had consistently fallen flat in earlier forums before audiences of party activists. After Saturday's debate, even strategists from rival campaigns privately praised his performance, but they raised the crucial question about his candidacy: Is his message too conservative to sell to Democratic primary voters?

With Bush's approval rating at 71 percent in the wake of the war in Iraq and with perceptions that the Democratic Party did not strongly support the war, national security, a potential weakness for the Democrats, took up a considerable amount of time in the debate.

So did health care. Gephardt took a pounding from his rivals for the biggest idea yet to emerge in the campaign, his proposal to provide corporations with tax credits to pay for health insurance for their workers and pay for the program by rescinding all of Bush's tax cuts.

The former House Democratic leader warned that offering the voters "Bush-lite" on the economy and domestic problems was a formula for certain defeat in 2004. "If you like George Bush's tax cuts, stick with him, vote for him," Gephardt said. "But if you want to finally solve this problem [of health care coverage] that's bedeviled our people for a hundred years, let's get it done."

Gephardt's rivals attacked the plan from the left and the right. Edwards labeled it a tax increase on "working families." Dean said it was far too expensive. Lieberman said it couldn't pass Congress and would rob money from Social Security and Medicare. Gephardt advisers professed delight that the plan became a focal point of the debate and argued that other candidates will have to offer plausible plans of their own.

But the reception showed that Gephardt still has a lot of selling to do and gave Republicans plenty of ammunition if he becomes the nominee.

Kerry and Dean provided the fireworks of the evening, as a long-simmering feud between their campaigns produced an early confrontation. Dean was a vociferous opponent of going to war in Iraq. Kerry voted for the resolution authorizing the war but spoke out strongly against Bush in the run-up to the conflict, and was criticized by Dean for trying to have it both ways. Lately, however, Dean has been on the defensive after a Kerry spokesman suggested he wasn't fit to be commander in chief because he did not support U.S. military supremacy.

The sparring has become increasingly personal. At one point in a series of exchanges, Dean said, "I would have preferred, if Senator Kerry had some concerns about my fitness to serve, that he speak to me directly about that rather than through his spokesman."

At another point, Kerry took his own shot at Dean for supposedly challenging Kerry's courage to fight for Democratic values. Pointing to his record in the Senate and his combat service in Vietnam, he said, "I don't need any lectures in courage from Howard Dean."

The exchanges offered a clearer picture of the race and how the candidates see one another. Behind the war of words between Kerry and Dean is a battle for the support of liberal, well-educated Democrats. Particularly in New Hampshire, a must-win state for Kerry, Dean poses a potential threat, and the Kerry campaign has decided to try to stop Dean now by raising doubts about his credentials before he can build up even more substantial support.

The Edwards attack on Gephardt's plan highlighted a contest for support from a different segment of the Democratic electorate, middle-income, blue-collar workers and their families who may respond to a message of economic populism. Gephardt and Edwards have presented themselves as candidates with modest roots whose presidencies will be attuned to the needs of average Americans.

Edwards's attack on Gephardt as someone taking money from workers and giving it to corporations suggested that he thinks Gephardt stands directly in his path to the nomination.

Graham, who will formally launch his candidacy Tuesday, is seeking his own niche in the nomination fight. A former chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Graham said he opposed the resolution authorizing war on Iraq because "I thought it was too weak."

Bush, he said, has largely abandoned the war on terrorism.

But his main credential, which he talked about throughout the weekend in South Carolina, is his successful record of being elected as both governor and senator for Florida, a state obviously crucial to the Democrats' hopes of winning in 2004. As he put it, "I represent the electable wing of the Democratic Party."

Sharpton, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun, the lower-tier candidates, speak from the party's most liberal wing.

Kucinich condemned the war in Iraq and said he would seek a 7.7 percent payroll tax on employers to fund government health insurance. Braun attacked Bush on civil liberties, and Sharpton likened Bush's tax cuts to the Kool-Aid that cult leader Jim Jones fed to his followers two decades ago in a mass suicide. "It tastes good, but it will kill you," he said.

There were light moments in the debate. When Kerry was asked about his reputation for aloofness, he replied, "Well, probably I ought to just disappear and contemplate that by myself." When Stephanopoulos asked Lieberman whether he was too nice to be president, he said with a laugh, "I'd like to come over there and strangle you, George."

The answers were humorous, but the questions had a direct point: How will the Democrats persuade voters that it is time to replace George W. Bush with one of the candidates onstage Saturday?

The first debate offered some initial clues but no final answers. Before the Democrats get to Bush, they will have to resolve their own debate about what kind of party it should be.